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Using sofTV.ShowAndTell with Blackboard
or WebCT
| A Quick
tutorial |
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Universities and colleges are increasingly using streaming
online lectures to supplement the live classroom experience.
Students can tune in online to view a live lecture,
to view a lecture they missed, or to review a section
of a lecture. Many universities use Blackboard or
WebCT as online tools, and will need to integrate
streaming lectures with their existing online solutions.
At the recent NMC conference in Columbus, a presentation
entitled “Streaming from Soup to Nuts,”
was given by Rich Loen of sofTV.net and Ken Singer
of RealNetworks. This presentation covered integrating
with Blackboard or WebCT, as well as the basics of
streaming video and audio. The PowerPoint slides for
this presentation are available online at: www.softv.net/help.
An online streaming media lecture may consist of a
number of components:
- A host web page that includes an embedded streaming
media player, or a web page that links to the
streaming content,
- The audio or video streaming media file,
- Slide images,
- Slide Notes,
- Table of Contents,
- Thumbnail images of the slides,
- A Pre-flight check which ensures that viewers
(student’s) machines have a browser and
media player that will enable them to watch the
lecture.
With the exception of the streaming media file, this
content is usually HTML and graphics files.
- There are a few ways to host this content:
- Place all content on your Blackboard or WebCT
server (not recommended),
- Place all HTML content on your Blackboard or WebCT
server, and place the streaming media on an external
streaming media server (recommended),
- Place all HTML content on an external web server,
and place the streaming media files on a streaming
media server.
It is possible to store streaming media files on a
web server, but there are some serious limitations
if you do so.
- Web servers can be overloaded by serving streaming
media – especially a hard working Blackboard
or WebCT server,
- you can’t seek the video/audio file –
it must play through from beginning to end,
- the file is transferred using HTTP which is much
less efficient than UDP which a media server uses,
- you can’t effectively use multi-rate streaming
(surestream) to stream the content at a rate appropriate
for the viewer’s connection speed,
- you can’t stream live lectures from a web
server.
We recommend that you always use a streaming media
server for the streaming content.
The HTML components of the lecture can easily be hosted
on your Blackboard or WebCT server. The files can
be uploaded in a group as a ZIP file, or can be uploaded
as separate files. You will want to designate the
“index.htm” file as the starting point
for the online lecture.
You can also host the lecture HTML files on a separate
web server, then simply link from your Blackboard
or WebCT material to the online lectures. Lecture
capture and publishing tools such as sofTV.ShowAndTell
and Presentation Maker can automatically upload lectures
to Web and Media servers.
sofTV.net also provides a “Lecture Portal Page”
that will automatically show all the available lectures,
and allow students to view them. The portal page does
not need to be updated each time a lecture is uploaded
– the new lecture automatically appears on the
portal page.
| Recommended
Settings for sofTV.ShowAndTell and WebCT or
Blackboard |
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There are a number of ways you may want to manage your
sofTV.ShowAndTell deployment. You may want to check
out the quick tutorial
that covers these basics.
| HTML
stored on Blackboard/WebCT server, and
streaming content stored on Media Server |
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- Make sure that "Create ZIP file of lecture
contents" is checked.
- Make sure that "Include streaming media file
in ZIP file is NOT checked.
- Enter to location where you would like to store
your ZIP files in the "ZIP File Location"
field.
- Uncheck "Upload files to web server"
- Check "Upload streaming media file to media
server" and enter FTP information for uploading
to your media server.
- Note that you must enter the Media Server Prefix.
This value is basically everything to the left
of the filename if you were to open and listen
to the lecture using a stand-alone media player.
When a lecture is recorded, professors should return
to their office, and plug their laptop into the network.
They should open sofTV.ShowAndTell, and go to the
"My Lectures" tab. They should select the
lecture they want to upload, then click on "Upload
Lecture" This will cause sofTV.ShowAndTell to
encode the audio file, and upload it to the media
server and create a ZIP file of the lecture HTML.
The lecture will be stored in the ZIP File Location
specified above. By default this is "C:\Lecture
Zip Files" The professor should open Blackboard
or WebCT, and go to the screen used to upload course
content. They should then navigate to the ZIP File
Location, and choose the ZIP file for the lecture
they want to upload. This file will be uploaded using
the standard Blackboard upload technique. When the
file is uploaded, you can have Blackboard or WebCT
unzip the file, and then choose index.htm as the starting
point for the lecture.
| All content
stored on Blackboard/WebCT Server |
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In this scenario, all the HTML and streaming content
for a lecture is uploaded to a web server. This is
adequate if you do not expect many students to view
the lecture simultaneously, and the load on your Blackboard/WebCT
server is not too high. A severe limitation is that
viewers will not be able to seek within the presentation.
They will have to watch it through from beginning
to end.
- Make sure that "Create ZIP file of lecture
contents" is checked.
- Make sure that "Include streaming media file
in ZIP file is checked.
- Enter to location where you would like to store
your ZIP files in the "ZIP File Location"
field.
- Uncheck "Upload files to web server"
and "Upload streaming media file to media
server"
- Media Server Prefix should be blank.
When a lecture is recorded, professors should return
to their office, and plug their laptop into the network.
They should open sofTV.ShowAndTell, and go to the
"My Lectures" tab. They should select the
lecture they want to upload, then click on "Preview
Lecture" This will cause sofTV.ShowAndTell to
encode and ZIP the lecture.
The lecture will be stored in the ZIP File Location
specified above. By default this is "C:\Lecture
Zip Files" The professor should open Blackboard
or WebCT, and go to the screen used to upload course
content. They should then navigate to the ZIP File
Location, and choose the ZIP file for the lecture
they want to upload. This file will be uploaded using
the standard Blackboard upload technique. When the
file is uploaded, you can have Blackboard or WebCT
unzip the file, and then choose index.htm as the starting
point for the lecture.
| All Content
stored on External web server and Media Server |
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- Make sure that "Create ZIP file of lecture
contents" is NOT checked.
- Check "Upload files to web server" and
"Upload streaming media file to media server"
and enter the FTP information for your Web Server
and your Media Server.
- Note that you must enter the Media Server Prefix.
This value is basically everything to the left
of the filename if you were to open and listen
to the lecture using a stand-alone media player.
When a lecture is recorded, professors should return
to their office, and plug their laptop into the network.
They should open sofTV.ShowAndTell, and go to the
"My Lectures" tab. They should select the
lecture they want to upload, then click on "Upload
Lecture" This will cause sofTV.ShowAndTell to
encode and ZIP the lecture and upload the files to
the web server and media server. The RM or WMA file
will be sent to your media server, and all other files
will be sent to your web server.
The professor should open Blackboard or WebCT, and
go to the screen used to manage course content. They
should make add a link to the course content, which
will be a link to the web server, and to the directory
where the course was uploaded, pointing to the file
index.htm. Courses are uploaded into a directory called
Courses\CourseName\Date
| All content
uploaded to staging area, then moved to web
server by an administrator |
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- Make sure that "Create ZIP file of lecture
contents" is checked.
- Check "Include streaming media file in ZIP
file"
- Check "Include uncompressed WAV file in ZIP
file" if you want to maintain a library of
the original files used to encode the lecture
from. These files will be huge, and will greatly
slow down the upload process. However, these files
can be very useful if you wish to re-encode the
lectures later when new streaming codec become
available, for instance.
- Enter a value for "ZIP File Location"
This can be any temporary directory.
- Check "Upload files to web server" and
enter the FTP information for your Web Server
or your upload staging area.
- Uncheck "Upload streaming media file to media
server"
- Note that you must enter the Media Server Prefix.
This value is basically everything to the left
of the filename if you were to open and listen
to the lecture using a stand-alone media player.
When a lecture is recorded, professors should return
to their office, and plug their laptop into the network.
They should open sofTV.ShowAndTell, and go to the
"My Lectures" tab. They should select the
lecture they want to upload, then click on "Upload
Lecture" This will cause sofTV.ShowAndTell to
encode and ZIP the lecture and upload the files to
the staging area. The RM or WMA file will be included
in the ZIP file.
The administrator can now open the ZIP file and move
the HTML and streaming content to the appropriate
location. He can then email the professor and let
them know the location of the index.htm file on the
web server. The professor can then add this link to
the course links in Blackboard or WebCT.
| sofTV.ShowAndTellPortal
with an external Web Server and Media Server
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- Make sure that "Create ZIP file of lecture
contents" is NOT checked.
- Check "Upload files to web server" and
"Upload streaming media file to media server"
and enter the FTP information for your Web Server
and your Media Server.
- Note that you must enter the Media Server Prefix.
This value is basically everything to the left
of the filename if you were to open and listen
to the lecture using a stand-alone media player.
One time only: The sofTV.ShowAndTellPortal must be
installed in the root directory of the courses, and
the professor must make a link on their course content
page to the sofTV.ShowAndTellPortal.
When a lecture is recorded, professors should return
to their office, and plug their laptop into the network.
They should open sofTV.ShowAndTell, and go to the
"My Lectures" tab. They should select the
lecture they want to upload, then click on "Upload
Lecture" This will cause sofTV.ShowAndTell to
encode and ZIP the lecture and upload the files to
the web server and media server. The RM or WMA file
will be sent to your media server, and all other files
will be sent to your web server.
Now, as each lecture is uploaded, the Portal page will
automatically be updated to include the new course
in its list. Students will be able to search through
the uploaded lectures for a particular piece of content,
and will be able to view any lecture at any time.
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